One fine afternoon in March 2010 a crane pulled up to The Little Mermaid on the Langelinie Promenade in Copenhagen. Chains and straps were secured around the main boulder on which the statue was mounted, and it was lifted up and carted away (fig. 1). The municipal authorities decided that The Little Mermaid would represent Denmark in the Danish pavilion at Expo 2010 taking place in Shanghai from May 1 – October 31.

Fig. 1. The Little Mermaid was taken away from the Langelinie Promenade for the first time since the statue was placed there in 1913.

The Danish pavilion in Shanghai 2010 was built by the BIG architects (Bjarne Ingels Group). http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/ ... -2010.html The pavilion aims not only to exhibit Danish values symbolised by The Little Mermaid. Through interaction, visitors are able to experience some of Copenhagen's best attractions: the city bike, the harbour bathing water, the nature playground and an ecological picnic. The looping, somewhat snail-shaped construction will have 1500 Copenhagen city bikes parked on the roof terrace, offered for general use to visitors during Expo 2010. The building’s interconnected loops make it possible for both pedestrians and cycles to traverse through the structure. At the bottom of the pavilion is a pool filled with seawater from the harbour in Copenhagen, and in the middle of the pool sits The Little Mermaid (fig. 2). The architects argue that it was necessary to exhibit the authentic sculpture to strengthen the idea that the Danish Pavilion offers a real experience of Danish city life.

Fig. 2. The Little Mermaid in the Danish pavillion in Shanghai.

The removal of the mermaid, which was staged as a major cultural event, with speeches made by the Minister of Culture and other culturally prominent persons, was witnessed by a large audience of journalists, flag-waving schoolchildren and adults. It also elicited numerous postings by readers on newspaper websites. There were a number of comments supporting the decision to send the most prominent national symbol to represent Denmark in China, but the majority of the reactions were critical, and two common threads uniting both critical and positive remarks were the questions: Why didn’t they send the duplicate version of the statue that was made by the artist at the time of the original casting? And, what would the unfortunate tourists look at when their guidebooks would direct them to the site – a palpably desolate pile of boulders (fig. 3)?

Fig. 3. The original site was empty for about 6 weeks after The Little Mermaid was removed.

The duplicate of The Little Mermaid is owned by the descendants of the artist who created it, Edvard Eriksen. The Eriksen family decided to exhibit the duplicate while the original version was in China. However, they preferred to have the statue placed in the middle of the artificial lake in the Tivoli amusement garden, where it would presumably be safeguarded from the vandalism that the original statue was subjected to over the years. In 1964, the head was sawed off. A new head was re-cast and mounted on the original statue, only to have the new head sawed off again in 1988. In 1984 the right arm was sawed off. Therefore, looking at the question of authenticity regarding the genuine physical matter (i.e. material authenticity), the duplicate statue comprises more of the original metal than the statue that is acclaimed by everyone to the ‘original’ – the version sitting out on the boulders on the Langelinie Promenade. It is probable that the Eriksen family realises this, and regards their duplicate version as the more authentic work of art.

And what will the poor tourists who follow their guidebooks to Langelinie see? They can follow the promenade a few hundred metres further north and see two other mermaids that will undoubtedly be the focus of an unprecedented amount of attention in the absence of the original mermaid: ‘The Modified Mermaid’ by Bjørn Nørgaard, 2006 (fig. 4), or the popularly called ‘Centrefold Mermaid’ by Peter Bech, 2007 (fig. 5). On the exact site of the removed statue they will see – The Little Mermaid ....in China, an authentic conceptual work of art by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (fig. 6, 7, and 8).

Fig. 4. The Modified Mermaid, by Bjørn Nørgaard, 2006.

Fig. 5. The New Mermaid, by Peter Bech, 2007.

Fig. 6. "Mermaid Exchange - Remote" by Ai Weiwei, 2010.

Fig. 7. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

Fig. 8. Explanation mounted near Weiwei's work on Langelinie.

This kind of playing with the viewer’s perception of authenticity reminded me of a medieval wall painting restoration project I had worked on ten years ago in Tirsted Church. Due to extreme salt contamination, six scenes of a decoration comprising 32 scenes in the chancel were detached and transferred to movable supports in 1973, and then screwed directly to the wall in their original positions. It didn’t take many years for salt damage to appear around the transfers. Because the 18mm thick oil-impregnated chipboard supports were impermeable, the salts were migrating around the transfers and emerging on the surface adjacent to them (fig. 9). During the re-restoration project in 2000, a decision was made to remove the transfers (which contained less than 20% original substance), and hang them in a remote area of the church, where there were no moisture problems (fig 10). In place of the removed scenes, the pictorial content was recreated with a monochromatic line drawing (fig. 11), so that the entire decoration in the chancel could be viewed on one plane, as originally intended. This was done with the approval of the church community, for whom the concept of authenticity resided in the pictorial content, and not in the material substance of the wall paintings.

My neighbor has recently returned home from China, where she taught English to young adults in Singapore for three months. The students’ reading assignments included fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson. Thinking it would be interesting for her students to experience the ‘spirit’ of fairy tales put into practice, she took her class to see the Danish Pavilion at the World Expo, with the ‘authentic’ Little Mermaid as its centerpiece. Before she had left, I asked her to assess the aura of authenticity, and whether the fact that the original work was on display in a pool of authentic water from the harbor in Copenhagen made an impact on viewers. The following is her summary of the visit:

It was another extremely hot day when our class went to see the Danish Pavilion. After queuing for more than 45 minutes in the 38°C heat, we finally entered the structure and could see the back of The Little Mermaid in the center of a pool of clear water. It was here, at the shallow end where the original plan was to let visitors wade into the pool, sharing an experience with Danes, who can bathe in the harbor in Copenhagen. The water in the wading pool gets deeper as one nears the statue, and so it is impossible to wade around and see the front of the figure. However, the entrance to the wading pool was roped off, and wading was forbidden, as it seems that the Chinese team that was hired to run the pavilion didn’t want to risk any drowning accidents, as most Chinese cannot swim. The queue snailed its way around the edge of the pool. and finally we got to the opposite side and could see the front side of the statue.

The mermaid sits gazing over the deep end of the pool, facing a viewing station for visitors wanting to take photographs of themselves with the famous sculpture in the background. A thick acrylic sheet is mounted in a panoramic window, creating a barrier between the viewers and the statue. By the time we got to the area, several hundred or more people had been there that day, and the surface of the plastic was clouded by the residue of sweaty hands. I found myself focusing on this unappealing smudged surface rather than the mermaid. We took a group photograph with a smeary mermaid in the distance, passed over the area where Danish open-faced sandwiches were sold (or rather, not being sold, as who in their right minds wanted to eat chicken salad with mayonnaise on dark bread in that heat), and we started up the spiraling ramp. The design of the structure with its looping walkway taking visitors to the roof, and then down again was very well thought out and was by far the best experience of the visit. We had a view down on the mermaid as we climbed up the slope on the right; on the left, information about the Denmark was mounted on the wall. We could also study various objects from Denmark in displays. The minimalistic nature of the displays seemed out of proportion in relation to structure. The overriding minimalism was even more apparent when we got to the roof. Here, the café was completely empty and closed, and the Copenhagen city bikes that visitors were supposed to ride down on specially constructed bike paths, were under lock and key, apparently due to the heat. It seems that the Chinese were having trouble with those bicycles. Many had trouble reaching the pedals, and couldn’t adjust to the braking by backpedalling system. We heard that there were accidents, and one cyclist ended up crashing into the mermaid’s pool.

My Chinese students were too polite to openly criticize anything about the exposition, and despite the obvious shortcomings, I got the impression that they were genuinely happy to see the mermaid. However, I did speculate over their awareness of the issue of authenticity. I saw them displaying similar delight when viewing miniature tourist statuettes of The Little Mermaid. As to my own impressions: I can say that there is an impression of fairy tales in the Danish Pavilion, but not the story of The Little Mermaid, rather one of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Related by Camilla Rasmussen to Isabelle Brajer

Meanwhile, back in Copenhagen, visitors to the original site of The Little Mermaid on the Langelinie Promenade can view Ai Weiwei’s installation and participate in their own little happening. People have started to climb up on one of the boulders and pose side by side with the virtual mermaid on the screen, perhaps experiencing a little spark of authenticity as they gaze on the crowd of tourist from the mermaid’s point of view.